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The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators by Eric Peterson
The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators by Eric Peterson
The Big Book of Key Performance Indicators by Eric Peterson
First Edition
Published January 1, 2006
Forward
Rarely do I see a client who doesn't have enough data, especially web data. It's widely
available. Yet, people are overwhelmed with it. The most sophisticated web analytics
tools today now give you the flexibility to configure millions of custom metrics and
reports. But who needs that many? How do you take advantage of that flexibility?
This has created an interesting dichotomy. While the web analytics tools get richer with
advanced features, the vast majority of marketing executives and their organizations that
I work with are looking to simplify their analysis around specific, actionable objectives
and key performance indicators (KPIs) because theyre struggling to adequately quantify
their results.
So lets start with the most high-level question, How are we performing?
Its a simple question, but a difficult one for marketers to answer. According to the CMO
Council, 90 percent of senior marketing executives say measuring marketing
performance is a top priority, yet only 20 percent have a comprehensive metrics
framework in place. This measurement gap is a direct reflection of the overwhelming
need for clarity and best practices around defining KPIs.
KPIs are the foundation to every successful web analytics solution. Having worked with
several Fortune 1000 companies in the past few years that wanted to better use the web
analytics solutions they invested in, nearly all of them struggled with the same
fundamental problem a lack of agreed upon KPIs to prove and improve the results of
their web business. Only in the hands of a seasoned business analyst, whether in-house or
outsourced, will an organization reap the additional benefits of the deeper ad-hoc analysis
capabilities that the web analytics tools provide. And, only after an organization has
clearly defined its objectives and established its scorecard of KPIs, does the more
advanced analysis become a lucrative initiative.
So what makes a KPI? Are there any standards or best practices? What are other
organizations doing? These questions and many others will be addressed within this
book.
Read on to understand the criteria of what distinguishes a KPI versus other measures.
You will find specific examples by industry and by site type. But, most importantly, you
will learn how to formulate your own KPIs for your specific business setting the
foundation for your future success. And thats what its really all about.
Jason Burby, Director of Web Analytics for ZAAZ, jasonb@zaaz.com
Forward
Contents
Forward ................................................................................................................................ i
Contents .............................................................................................................................. ii
Chapter 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................ 1
Why this Book?............................................................................................................... 2
How This Book Is Designed to Evolve........................................................................... 2
Key Performance Indicators and Your Web Measurement Vendor ............................... 3
About the Use of Screenshots throughout This Book..................................................... 3
Cookies and Key Performance Indicators....................................................................... 3
About the Author ............................................................................................................ 4
Other Valuable References ............................................................................................. 5
Books .......................................................................................................................... 5
Web Sites, People and Groups.................................................................................... 5
Chapter 2 Introduction to Key Performance Indicators...................................................... 7
What is a Key Performance Indicator? ........................................................................... 7
Definition .................................................................................................................... 8
Presentation................................................................................................................. 8
Expectation ............................................................................................................... 10
Action........................................................................................................................ 10
What is not a Key Performance Indicator? ................................................................... 11
How Should Key Performance Indicators Be Presented?............................................. 11
Format ....................................................................................................................... 11
Contents
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Timeliness of Delivery.............................................................................................. 12
Annotation................................................................................................................. 12
Who Gets What? ....................................................................................................... 13
Seriously, Dont Send Everyone 50 Key Performance Indicators! .............................. 14
How Should Key Performance Indicators Be Used?.................................................... 15
How Should People Respond to Key Performance Indicators?.................................... 16
About Business Specific Key Performance Indicators ................................................. 16
Chapter 3 The Indicators................................................................................................... 18
Averages ....................................................................................................................... 18
Average Page Views per Visit .................................................................................. 19
Average Visits per Visitor ........................................................................................ 21
Average Time to Respond to Email Inquiries........................................................... 23
Average Cost per Visitor .......................................................................................... 24
Average Cost per Visit.............................................................................................. 25
Average Cost per Conversion ................................................................................... 26
Average Revenue per Visitor.................................................................................... 27
Average Revenue per Visit ....................................................................................... 28
Average Order Value ................................................................................................ 29
Average Items per Cart Completed........................................................................... 31
Average Clicks per Impression by Campaign Type (Click-Through Rate) ............. 32
Average Visits Prior to Conversion .......................................................................... 33
Average Searches per Visit....................................................................................... 34
Percentages ................................................................................................................... 35
Percent New and Returning Visitors......................................................................... 35
Percent New and Returning Customers .................................................................... 37
Contents
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Contents
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Contents
Contents
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Introduction
Chapter 1
Introduction
Having spent most of my professional life in the web analytics field, either as a
programmer, a consultant or an analyst covering the space, one of the things I have had
repeatedly observed is that web analytics is not easy. No matter how simple and refined
the interface or eloquent the explanation, most business people simply dont seem to take
the time to understand the available data and try and use it to their advantage. But web
data is critical to the success of every online business, a truth that is proven again and
again every day. So the question becomes, How can I make more people care about the
data that we mine from our web site?
How about making it easier for them to understand?
The classic web analytics presentation includes pages and pages of data presented in
worksheets and PowerPoint slides using domain-specific technical jargon, jargon that
most normal people dont understand. Often times web analytics salespeople will say
with all sincerity, Our application is so easy to use that everyone in your company will
want to log in and use it! Unfortunately, this is rarely true, and this type of thinking
usually leads to companies cycling through analytics vendors looking for the right
interface and the right reports.
For most people working in the online world, the right interface is an annotated
spreadsheet, slide or email. For nearly everyone, the right reports are the exact reports
they need to succeed in their job, nothing more, and nothing less, presented in language
that they understand. The former are generic and already universally deployed. The
latter are specific to the business, the line of business and the stakeholder and need to be
individually deployed. The truth is that most people are unlikely to use a web analytics
application to do any type of meaningful analysis.
So what can you do?
Personally, I recommend key performance indicators and dedicated analytics expertise as
a substitute for churning through applications in search of a silver bullet. Based on years
of experience and volumes of research, the proper use of key performance indicators,
managed by appropriate staff and widely distributed throughout the organization, does
more to improve a companys understanding of how the Internet impacts the overall
business than any attractive user interface or pretty graph. When companies proactively
define their business goals and the visitor activities that satisfy those goals, key
Introduction
Introduction
performance indicators become plainly obvious; when everyone is getting the right key
performance indicator reports, everyone gets on the same page and the business begins to
make excellent use of their investment in web analytics.
This book is all about key performance indicatorswhat they are, how theyre defined,
how theyre used, who should use themall of it. And if youre serious about getting
more from your investment in web analytics, read on!
Cookie blocking: Consumers preventing cookies from being set impacts most
calculations dependent on sessions or visits. Some analytics applications
will revert to less accurate methods than cookies to stitch subsequent page views
together into a visit; other applications simply drop visit data for browsers that
Introduction
Cookie deletion: Consumers erasing the analytics cookie from the computers
hard-drive, either manually or using some type of anti-spyware application,
impacts any calculations dependent on visitors. Short-term measurements of
visitors are less affected but as time goes on and more browser cookies are
deleted, visitors who have already been identified as having visited the site
previously appear to be new. The greatest impact from cookie deletion is on key
performance indicators like average visits per visitor where the same person
might look like multiple visitors because a new cookie is being repeatedly set.
Rather than provide a section in each indicators description talking about the risk
associated with data collection I would instead offer the following advice:
1. Consult with your analytics vendor regarding their best practices policy for
cookie use. Most will recommend using first-party cookies to minimize
automated blocking and deletion activities. I strongly recommend following
whatever advice your vendor provides, unless of course they profess no
knowledge of problems associated with cookies, in which case I strongly
recommend you find a new analytics vendor.
2. Work to minimize risks associated with cookies by using first-party cookies
and by examining short timeframes whenever possible. One of the reasons I
advocate reporting your KPIs on a daily or weekly basis is that it gives your
visitors less time to delete cookies.
3. Dont stress out over cookie blocking and deletion. As long as you know
cookie deletion is happening youre better off than any number of companies who
still dont understand the problem. Plus, since key performance indicators are
designed to highlight changes, their use is actually a brilliant strategy to mitigate
the ramifications of cookie blocking and deletion.
For a more complete treatment of the problems with cookies and some alternatives I
recommend reading Hacks 15, 16 and 17 in my book Web Site Measurement Hacks. The
first discusses improving data accuracy using cookies, the second covers first-party
cookies and the third alternatives to cookies. You can learn more about Web Site
Measurement Hacks at my web site, www.webanalyticsdemystified.com.
Books
One of my favorite books that cover key performance indicators extensively is Web Site
Measurement Hacks: Tips & Tools to Help Optimize Your Online Business which I
authored in 2005 with seventeen brilliant web analytics professionals. The entirety of
Chapter 7, titled Reporting Strategies and Key Performance Indicators, provides much
the same guidance I offer in this book. Web Site Measurement Hacks is well reviewed
and available at just about any book store in the world, including Amazon.com, thanks to
the kind folks at OReilly & Associates.
Another of my favorites, no big surprise, is my first book, Web Analytics Demystified: A
Marketers Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business. Web
Analytics Demystified provides an excellent introduction to the subject of web site
analysis and measurement. In my freshman effort I examine the relevant metrics at each
phase in the customer life cyclereach, acquisition, conversion and retention
recommending key performance indicators worth tracking at each phase. You can
purchase Web Analytics Demystified at Amazon.com or via my eponymous web site,
www.webanalyticsdemystified.com.
In addition to these fine books, many of the analytics vendors including WebSideStory
(registration required) have published whitepapers on the subject that are available for
download.
ZAAZ: The folks at ZAAZ make really good use of KPIs and you can learn more
about their thoughts at www.zaaz.com. One of their principal analysts is Jason
Burby who incidentally writes a column for the Clickz Network in which he often
covers KPIs. You can see the breadth of Jasons writing at
www.clickz.com/experts/author/index.php/65333
Introduction
Web Analytics Association: Oh, and speaking of the Web Analytics Association
founded in 2005 by Bryan Eisenberg and Jim Sterne, the group is providing all
kinds of insight and education to those folks interested in the subjects of web
analytics and key performance indicators. Learn more about the group at
www.webanalyticsassociation.org
Jim Sterne: And speaking of Jim Sterne Mr. Sterne is the Godfather of web
analytics, not because of his age but simply because of the clout he wields. Prior
to having founded the Web Analytics Association with Bryan Eisenberg, Jim had
written dozens of books on web marketing and web analytics including one of the
most important documents ever produced on the subject, E-metrics: Business
Metrics for the New Economy. Jim hosts a few hundred really interested folks
every year at his E-metrics Summit in Santa Barbara, California and London,
England. Learn how to join us at www.emetrics.org
Jim Novo: One of Mr. Sternes good friends is Jim Novo, author of any number
of books on web analytics including Drilling Down: Turning Customer Data into
Profits with a Spreadsheet. Mr. Novo is an authority on key performance
indicators and his web site, www.jimnovo.com, is definitely worth checking out.
Web Analytics Forum: As if this isnt enough, you should know about the Web
Analytics Forum at Yahoo! Groups. A group that I had the pleasure of founding
in 2004 when I first published Web Analytics Demystified, the Forum is
comprised of well over 1,000 web analytics professionals around the globe asking
and answering questions. Free to all comers, you can sign up at
groups.yahoo.com/group/webanalytics/.
For more resources on key performance indicators please check out my web site,
www.webanalyticsdemystified.com. Having purchased this book, youll have access to
additional information on the subject.
Introduction
Chapter 2
Introduction to
Key Performance
Indicators
As mentioned in the introduction, key performance indicators are a response to a general
organizational fear of big, ugly spreadsheets and complex applications. The big idea
behind KPIs is that youre taking technical data and presenting it using business-relevant
language. Key performance indicators:
Leverage tachometers and thermometers and stoplights instead of pie charts and
bar graphs
Provide temporal context and highlight change instead of presenting tables of data
The last point is the most important, that all good key performance indicators drive
action. Ill say it again since its worth repeating: All good key performance indicators
drive action. This is the polite way of saying, Any KPI that, when it changes suddenly
and unexpectedly does not inspire someone to send an email, pick up the phone or take a
quick walk to find help, is not a KPI worth reporting.
Definition
Key performance indicators are always rates, ratios, averages or percentages; they are
never raw numbers. Raw numbers are valuable to web analytics reporting to be sure, but
because they dont provide context, are less powerful than key performance indicators.
Consider the following
Say you take 10,000 orders on Monday. Great, right? Not if you took 100,000 orders on
the previous Monday. And not if you took those 10,000 orders from 1,000,000 people
youd paid good money to bring to your site, especially when you took 100,000 orders
the previous Monday
See what I mean? Without context 10,000 is just a number. Not good, not bad, but not
really informative. Thats why I insist to the chagrin of my respected peers that KPIs are
always rates, ratios, averages or percentages. Its not to say that you should exclude raw
numbers from your KPI reportquite the opposite! Raw numbers are necessary to
provide context to these reports and to promote conversation. All Im saying is that raw
numbers are not key performance indicators.
Key performance indicators are designed to summarize meaningfully compared data.
Prior to writing this book, many people spent a great deal of time discussing which data
were meaningfully compared. Now you can just read the definitions in this book and
save yourself the time.
Presentation
Im tempted to say that presentation is the most important aspect of any key performance
indicatorhow you choose to highlight changes over time, alert based on thresholds,
etc.but that wouldnt be right. Whether the KPI drives valuable action is the most
important aspect. Still, Ive observed that companies that use colors, visual cues and
appropriate visual elements to present their KPIs usually see greater interest on the part of
the reader. Consider the following images:
Figure 1: A standard key performance indicator report showing values for the current and previous
reporting period
Figure 2: A standard key performance indicator report showing values for the current and previous
reporting period plus a visual indicator of directional change, percent change, target value, percent
of goal and any relevant warnings to quickly call out problem metrics
Hopefully youll see that in the second example it is much easier to quickly identify the
problem areas on the site. Even without any warning messages, the use of downward
arrows and the color red (natures universal oh shit! color) draws the readers eye
towards the metrics that demand attention.
Consider the following presentation cues when you build your own key performance
indicator reports:
Indicators always show comparison over time. You should never present a
single, static key performance indicator unless the people youre presenting to
know the number like they know their age or phone number. Never assume that
people will remember these numbers from day-to-day or week-to-week. Show
them how they were doing, considering temporal comparisons like this day last
week, yesterday, last week, this week last month, etc. and combinations
thereof.
Green is good, red is bad, yellow is getting bad. If youre using Microsoft
Excel, use the conditional formatting option to color-code your indicators for easy
reading. Oh, and bold and red is really bad.
Always show the percent change from reporting period to reporting period.
Because key performance indicators are designed to set expectations, you need to
let your reader know where they are regarding those expectations. Plus, if youre
going to bother showing comparison over time, you might as well go the extra
mile and do the math. Remember: (this period minus last period) divided by last
period equals percent change from last period to this period.
Set thresholds and show warnings. While youre color coding your indicators,
take the time to compare either the numbers or the percent change calculations to
a pre-set threshold and show a warning if that threshold is exceeded. For
example, if your order conversion rate drops by 5 percent, show a MILD
CONCERN warning, if it drops by 10 percent, show a MEDIUM CONCERN
warning, and if it drops by more than 20 percent show a RUN SCREAMING!
warning.
Set targets for improvement and report against those targets. Since setting
expectation is critical to the use of key performance indicators, you may as well
report and measure against those expectations. That way you can show a warning
if youre dangerously far from your target.
Sounds complicated, huh? Thats why I coded all of the key performance indicators
described in this book into a companion Excel spreadsheet, to save you the time having to
build spreadsheets (see an example in Figure 2). All you have to do is drop the necessary
data in, set your thresholds, add definitions that will be understood by your audience and
youre off and running. Hopefully youll look like a genius.
No need to thank me.
Expectation
A big part of presentation is setting expectations and then communicating how close you
are to your set targets. Dont simply track your indicators; challenge yourself and your
organization to improve upon them.
Put another way, you wont get the full value out of your investment in key performance
indicators (and this book) until you use them as the reporting input into the continual
improvement processmeasure, report, analyze, optimizeusing them week-over-week,
month-over-month. The only reason you optimize the site is to drive improvement
(hence the name, continual improvement process.) Trying to do so in a vacuum is
wasteful. I strongly recommend that you set a target for improvement and diligently
work towards that goal.
Even if you dont meet your targets and expectations, by setting them you force people to
keep KPIs under consideration. If you want to take it to the next level, consider setting
high (but reasonable) expectations for improvement in key performance indicators and
then paying bonuses each quarter based on successful attainment of those goals. The
promise of free money usually gets people intensely interested in the numbers.
Action
Key performance indicators should either drive action or provide a warm, comforting
feeling to the reader; they should never be met with a blank stare. Ask yourself If this
number improves by 10 percent who should I congratulate? and If this number declines
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Format
There are a variety of ways you can deliver KPI reports throughout your organization:
email, spreadsheets, slides, documents, dashboards and the like. I tend to favor
spreadsheets like Microsoft Excel because they provide most of the functionality
necessary to achieve the presentation goals for key performance indicators described
above. Additionally, many web analytics application vendors provide direct data access
from Microsoft Excel that can dramatically simplify the report generation process.
Hopefully youll be able to automate data into the Excel spreadsheet provided with this
book to save yourself a bunch of time generating reports so you can dedicate time to
analyzing the metrics.
Introduction to Key Performance Indicators
11
Timeliness of Delivery
If you take the necessary time to build a key performance indicator report but either only
distribute the report once a quarter or worse, dont distribute the report at all, youre
wasting your time. Every organization is different but KPIs are only effective if people
see them frequently enough to actually keep them in mind when making business
decisions. In general, I recommend that retailers deliver their KPI reports on a daily basis
and all other business models deliver reports on a weekly basis.
Even if youre unable to meet every day or every week to discuss the ramifications of the
report, make sure your indicators are being generated, annotated and delivered. Doing so
will keep the recipients up to date and hopefully make any conversation about the metric
more productive. Fight the temptation to only send out reports just prior to any meeting
on the subject of KPIs; this practice is the same as hoping that people will log into the
analytics application frequently enough to maintain any sense of relationship with the
data. Its great in theory but usually fails to produce the desired results.
Annotation
As Ive alluded to several times, annotating your KPI reports is perhaps one of the most
important things your web data analysis staff can do to promote the proper use of these
metrics. While KPIs are designed to promote action, providing relevant notes alongside
indicators that are in decline often helps promote the right action. If nothing else,
adding a note to any metric exceeding set thresholds stating that the web data team is
already exploring the problem and hopes to have a recommendation very soon will cut
down on unnecessary phone calls and meetings (Figure 3).
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Figure 3: Annotation included as a top-line summary of indicators that are changing or under
investigation.
Senior strategists: Senior stakeholders should get two to five KPIs depending on
the breadth of their direct responsibility in the organization. An example would
be the CEO of a retail web site who should see order conversion rate, average cost
per conversion and average revenue per visitor along with whatever
measurements he or she needed to do her job.
Mid-tier strategists: Junior strategic stakeholders should get five to seven KPIs
that include the KPIs senior stakeholders receive plus strategic indicators relevant
to their particular department or line of business. An example would be the Vice
President of Marketing who would get the same indicators as the CEO plus topline KPIs reporting conversion rate for each campaign type currently deployed.
Tactical resources: Tactical stakeholders get seven to ten KPIs including the
same indicators their managers get plus detailed KPIs reporting on individual
campaigns, promotions or pages. An example would be the Director of Online
Marketing who would get the same indicators as the Vice President of Marketing
plus KPIs describing conversion rates for top active campaigns.
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Averages
Chapter 3
The Indicators
Because there are a multitude of key performance indicators, this list of all useful KPIs is
broken down by the kind of number presented: averages, percentages, rates and ratios.
While this breakdown is clearly artificial, I thought it would be best to group KPIs in the
way most people think about the data. For example, when you ask about conversion rate,
the percentage of new or returning visitors or the average number of page views per visit
youre identifying explicitly the kind of number you expect.
Averages
While averages are conveniently generated for a number of important metrics, it pays to
keep the definition of an average in mind when using the following key performance
indicators. The average, or arithmetic mean, according to the Wikipedia is as follows:
The arithmetic mean is the standard "average", often simply called the "mean". It
is used for many purposes and may be abused by using it to describe skewed
distributions, with highly misleading results. A classic example is average
income. The arithmetic mean may be used to imply that most people's incomes are
higher than is in fact the case. When presented with an "average" one may be led
to believe that most people's incomes are near this number. This "average"
(arithmetic mean) income is higher than most people's incomes, because high
income outliers skew the result higher (in contrast, the median income "resists"
such skew). However, this "average" says nothing about the number of people
near the median income (nor does it say anything about the modal income that
most people are near). Nevertheless, because one might carelessly relate
"average" and "most people" one might incorrectly assume that most people's
incomes would be higher (nearer this inflated "average") than they are. Consider
the scores {1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 9}. The arithmetic mean is 3.17, but five out of six scores
are below this!
(From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average.) The important thing to keep in mind when using
average-based key performance indicators is that, as the Wikipedia says, skewed
distributions can lead to the misleading results. This problem often arises when looking
at average time spent on a pagethe average time spent looks ridiculously long or short
but nothing appears to be wrong with the data. When this happens, either try and
The Indicators
18
Averages
calculate the median value (50 percent of the values are above, 50 percent are below) or
simply do the best you can.
Another problem with averages is that there is really no such thing as an average visit
or visitorevery person who comes to your web site will behave slightly differently.
Some people argue that using averages to understand how people browse content often
leads to misinterpretation but I disagree. Used in the context of the following key
performance indicators, thinking about the average visit or visitor will help you better
understand the lowest common denominatorthe habits and behaviors of people who are
neither your best nor worst visitors, only those who come in the largest numbers. You
dont necessarily want to make sweeping changes to your site based on the activities of
average visitors but you want to keep a close eye on what the majority is doing. One
thing sophisticated users may want to try to overcome this effect is segmenting your
audience in meaningful ways and then building the following KPIs; the segmentation will
refine the behaviors measured into more focused groups, hopefully allowing you to take
more specific actions based on the data.
The Indicators
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Content: CPM-based business models that depend on high page view volumes
should work to increase the average number of page views per visit, thusly
increasing the value of each visit.
Marketing and Retail: Marketing and retail sites generally want to increase this
average, indicating a greater interest on the part of the visitor. However,
depending on the specific goals of the site, more page views can indicate
confusion on the part of the visitor.
Support: Customer support sites generally want to decrease the number of page
views per visit, at least in sections specifically designed to help visitors find
information quickly.
Action
When the average number of page views per visit trend against expectations, I
recommend examining a handful of common site components that affect page views:
Navigational elements: If it is difficult for visitors to navigate your site they will
often be forced to view more pages as they hunt. Conversely, if your site is
difficult to navigate, visitors may leave your site prematurely out of frustration.
Content: If your content is poorly written and doesnt follow best practices for
writing for the web, visitors may leave your site prematurely. Conversely, if your
content is well written, visitors may be inspired to keep reading, driving up the
average number of page views.
The Indicators
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Marketing efforts: If your marketing efforts are poorly targeted, visitors are less
likely to view many pages. Conversely, if your marketing efforts are good,
visitors may view a large number of pages.
When diagnosing problems with average page views per visit one of the places you may
want to look is at your time spent on site and average time spend on pages reports if your
analytics application provides them (Figure 5). You may also want to look at how your
internal search application is being used by examining percent visitors using search,
percent zero result searches and average searches per visit.
Figure 5: Sample time spent (length of visit) report from Google Analytics, useful in diagnosing
problems reflected in the average page views per visit key performance indicator
The Indicators
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Figure 6: Visitors and percent new visitors reports from Google Analytics
Presentation
The challenge with presenting average visits per visitor is that you need to examine an
appropriate timeframe for this KPI to make sense. Depending on your business model it
may be daily or it may be annually: Search engines like Google or Yahoo can easily
justify examining this average on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Marketing sites that
support very long sales cycles waste their time with any greater granularity than monthly.
Consider changing the name of the indicator when you present it to reflect the timeframe
under examination, for example Average Daily Visits per Visitor or Average Monthly
Visits per Visitor.
Expectation
Expectations for average visits per visitor vary widely by business model.
Retail: Retail sites selling high-consideration items will ideally have a low
average number of visits indicating low barriers to purchase; those sites selling
low consideration items will ideally have a high average number of visits, ideally
indicating numerous repeat purchases. Online retailers are advised to segment
The Indicators
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Content and Marketing: Advertising and marketing sites will ideally have high
average visits per visitor, a strong indication of loyalty and interest.
Support: Customer support sites will ideally have a low average visits per visitor,
suggesting either high satisfaction with the products being supported or easy
resolution of problems. Support sites having high frequency of visit per visitor
should closely examine average page views per visit, time spent on site (see
Figure 5) and call center volumes, especially if the indicator is in decline.
Action
All web sites desire some kind of relationship with their visitors over timethe wild
cards are usually the type of relationship and the amount of time. Customer support sites
want people to visit whenever they have a problem but dont want customers to have
problems per se yielding a high average visits per visitor over a longer period of time.
Retail, marketing and advertising sites all want people to come back all the time to buy,
learn or click respectively. The challenge for site operators is figuring out how exactly to
drive this return activity and knowing what to do when it fails to appear.
For the most part, when this KPI trends in the wrong direction you need to ask what just
happened? Your average visits per visitor should be relatively stable providing your site
has been available for at least 6 months and youve not made any major changes to the
site or your retention marketing strategy. Therein lies the opportunity: If you change
your retention marketing strategy or your site you should expect to see a change (albeit
slight) in this KPI in the following weeks and months. If none appears, what went
wrong? If the KPI improves dramatically, great! Understand what you did well and
repeat as often as possible.
If this KPI suddenly gets worse, figure out why. Common culprits include site changes
breaking bookmarked links, the emergence of a new competitor and the intangible offline
vibe, e.g., perhaps youre just no longer as cool as you think. Keep in mind before you
panic: You need to give your visitors enough time to return and visit depending on your
business model.
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The Indicators
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The Indicators
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Retail: For retail sites the sum of revenue generated is easily calculated.
The Indicators
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Support: Customer support sites should ideally sum the amount of customer
contract value supported by the site. For example, if you know that 100 people
are getting support for a $100 product and 50 people are getting support for a
$500 product, the sum of revenue supported would be 100 x $100 + 50 x 500 =
$1,250,00.
While the customer support case is obviously artificial it serves no less value for sites
to track the value of visitors they support.
Presentation
As with other dollar-based KPIs, presentation should be fairly obvious. The only
exception would be for the customer support model in which the indicator should be
clearly titled Average Revenue Supported per Visitor.
Expectation
As you would expect, the more revenue per visitor youre able to get, the better off you
are. The obvious strategy for improving this performance indicator is to attract more
valuable visitors to your web site. Consider using average revenue per visitor to critically
examine each new visitor acquisition effort, segmenting as necessary, to determine
whether different strategies are actually working.
Action
If this number drops off suddenly or precipitously likely the first call you should make is
to your marketing department and the next to your operations group. Often times either a
large group of unqualified visitors has been attracted to the site or something has gone
wrong with your revenue realization path (e.g., your shopping cart is broken or your site
is performing slowly, thusly reducing the number of advertising impressions you serve.)
NOTE: This key performance indicator makes the list of RED BUTTON KPIs that,
when they go wrong, should bring everyone to a screeching halt while the problem is
diagnosed.
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In the ongoing effort to optimize the online business there are two major KPIs describing
the sites ability to generate revenueaverage order value and order conversion rate.
Smart business owners work diligently to improve both but segmenting visitors and
marketing campaigns into high, medium and low average order value (AOV) groups can
help identify where the best (e.g., high AOV) customers are coming from.
You may want to calculate this indicator for both your new and returning customers and
presenting those KPIs in context with percent new and returning visitors. Most analytics
and commerce reporting packages will provide that level of segmentation without
additional work.
Presentation
As with other dollar-based KPIs, presentation should be fairly obvious. It is a good idea
to present this indicator and average cost per conversion, order conversion rate and
average revenue per visitor together to provide context to each.
Sites trying to positively impact average order value often work to improve up-sell and
cross-sell, essentially getting customers to add additional value to the cart prior to the
checkout process. To this end, it is also worthwhile to track average items per cart along
with average order value.
Expectation
Sites should determine a baseline average order value for all customers to use as a
comparator for all marketing acquisition campaigns. For example, it might help to make
and keep track of the average order value for the entire site, targeted email campaigns,
untargeted email campaigns, search marketing efforts and so on. Assuming your
conversion rate is same for all customer acquisition efforts (rarely the case), youll
discover that youre better off focusing your efforts on high-AOV generating campaign
types.
Entire Site AOV
Email AOV
Keyword AOV
Banner Ad AOV
$100.10
$95.50
$120.15
$101.25
As you can see, the average order value for customers associated with search keywords is
20 percent higher than the site-wide AOV.
Action
A decrease in average order value should be compared to changes in the order conversion
rate. If AOV decreases but order conversion rate increases average revenue per visitor
should stay roughly the same; if AOV and order conversion rate both drop revenue per
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Percentages
Action
This indicator is typically used when deploying or optimizing search technology, helping
site operators understand whether visitors are using search enough relative to the
investment. On an ongoing basis this KPI rarely changes without some other change
affecting the prominence of the sites search box. Any significant but unexpected
changes should prompt an examination of the audience makeup as well as a review of the
quality of search results provided; in situations where search results dramatically worsen,
this KPI will provide a leading indicator of problems that may not otherwise be obvious.
Percentages
Relative to averages, percentages are well understood and usually well behaved. Most of
the percentages presented in this chapter are designed to help the reader understand the
distribution of visitors coming to the web site. Also, compared to averages, percentages
are often more easily affected by making changes to marketing, messaging or the site
infrastructure. Want to dramatically increase the percentage of new visitors coming to
the site? Increase your marketing spend. Want to increase your percentage of low
recency customers? Improve offers in emails sent to customers who have recently
purchased.
To simplify the description of calculations used throughout this chapter, I assume that the
reader understands the need to multiply each of the results by 100 to report a more
traditional percentage (a number between 0% and 100% instead of a number between
zero and one.)
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Figure 8: Sample executive dashboard from Google Analytics showing average page views per visit,
percent new and returning visitors and percent visits from key referring sources
New visitors are usually defined as visitors who do not possess the analytics
applications identifying cookie; returning visitors are usually defined as having those
cookies and are often also bounded by time (e.g., monthly returning visitors.) Cookie
deletion results in an artificial increase in the number of new visitors that appear to be
coming to the sitethe identifying cookie has been deleted and so the application
believes it to not have existed and thusly will identify the visitor as new.
Presentation
Because this indicator is susceptible to inaccuracy due to cookie deletion, it is worthwhile
to either attempt to quantify the ongoing rate at which your visitors delete cookies and
provide an error rate or to at least note that the percentages are subject to error based on
cookie deletion. Otherwise these percentages are typically widely understood.
Expectation
These KPIs are strongly dependent on your particular marketing strategy. If you focus a
great deal on new visitor acquisition, ideally you have a greater percentage of new than
returning visitors; conversely, if youre focused heavily on visitor retention, hopefully
your percent returning visitors is high.
Your site, depending on your particular business model and marketing needs at any given
time should have a relatively stable percentage of new and returning visitors. As you
increase your marketing spend or reach back out to existing visitors, you expect these
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Figure 9: Click depth per visit report from Google Analytics. This type of distribution is where a
web data analyst would look to attempt to diagnose a decline in your high click depth visitor
percentage
Assuming you have access to that report, all you need to do is assign a range of clicks to
your low, medium and high categories, keeping in mind that pages viewed and
clicks are analogs (meaning the visitor has to click to get to the page and that one
click is the link they clicked to get to your site or the click on the enter key if they
typed the URL directly.)
For most sites, good ranges are as follows:
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Figure 10: Visitor recency report showing the number of visits generated from visitors having come
n days ago. What this report says is that the vast majority of visitors to the site had been here only
on this day (new visitors)
Presentation
Because few people really seem to understand what recency describes it is probably a
good idea to provide the definition along with the KPI. It is important to emphasize that
low recency is good in this contextthe shorter the number of days between previous
visits, the likelier the visitors will engage in some action of value.
Also, as the recency of your audience changes, you expect to see changes in other metrics
such as the percent high, medium and low frequency visitors and many of your value
KPIs.
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Poor qualification: The number of visits to the site has gone up but the new
traffic is poorly qualified.
Visitor confusion: The number of visits to the site has gone up but the visiting
people can not find what theyre looking for.
Because of how people shop online, there will always be a substantial segment of traffic
coming to your site that has no intention to purchase. Your job with web analytics is to
optimize your marketing so that you can find more people who are engaged in the
shopping process, to quickly help them find the products or services you have that they
are looking for, and to get them through your checkout process without impediment. If
you keep this in mind, youll hopefully see where to spend your time when you inevitably
decide that your order conversion rate is too low and needs improvement.
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Example 1: Most visitors come to your site only once and during that visit
successfully complete a purchase.
Example 2: Most visitors come to your site many times before making a
purchase.
Example 3: Your visitors are a mix of people who purchase quickly and people
who purchase after long deliberation.
In the first case, your order and buyer conversion rates will be very close together. In the
second case, your order conversion rate will be lower than your buyer conversion rate. In
the third case, it depends on the mix of fast and slow purchasers.
Keep in mind that most people wont purchase regardless of the number of visits to the
site. Again, welcome to the Internet.
By juxtaposing order and buyer conversion rate you will eventually develop an
understanding of your purchasers consideration cycle. Once you understand their habits,
you can then try and influence their behavior using clever marketing and aggressive
pricing.
Action
If your buyer conversion rate decreases it either means youre increasingly failing to
convert people into customers or that you have a high consideration purchase cycle (order
and buyer conversion rates are disparate) and you just injected a large number of new
people into the process. Regardless of the cause, any substantial change in your buyer
conversion rate needs to be diagnosed. Look at your inbound marketing campaigns, any
changes to your pricing or checkout process and your percent new and returning visitors.
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Content: Media and content sites have numbers close to or below 1.00, especially
when theyre well established.
Retail: Retail sites that sell multiple products have numbers above 2.00 or 3.00.
Marketing: Lead generation sites have numbers that are very high, often 10.0 or
greater.
Support: Customer support sites have numbers around 1.00, depending on the
products being supported.
These numbers are not set in stone and your ratio will inevitably vary. Still, when it
changes dramatically, you want it to be because youve actively done something, not
because of sudden visitor or customer dissatisfaction.
Action
If the ratio changes suddenly and unexpectedly you should take the same action you
would when observing changes in your percent new and returning visitors. Explore your
recent marketing and customer retention efforts, changes to the layout or delivery of your
site and, if possible, and changes in what your visitors are saying about you publicly or to
you directly. In the last case you may discover that notable bloggers or journalists are
talking about your site in either a positive or negative light, or that customer complaints
have recently increased, thusly increasing visitor churn.
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Senior strategists: Senior executives get a aggregated rates for all of your
campaign types individually as well as a single aggregate for all campaigns.
Mid-tier strategists: Strategic resources see the same executive report and a
subset of individual campaigns (top performers, bottom performers, currently
most important, etc.)
Tactical resources: Tactical resources see the executive report and have greater
breadth in their specific tactical area.
For example, someone in charge of email marketing will see their campaign conversion
rate compared to all other forms of marketing and also a list of the most active or relevant
email campaigns. Below this level of reporting the responsibility really falls on the
analytics application proper and outside of the realm where KPIs are actually helpful.
Expectation
See order conversion rate.
Action
See order conversion rate.
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Most people who study checkout processes agree that fewer steps are better.
While it may look better or cleaner to ask for each discreet unit of information
(shipping address, billing address, shipping information, special options,
confirmation) consolidating this information in an organized fashion will save
shoppers two or three pages, giving them fewer options to abandon the process.
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Make sure the required fields are clearly marked. Or, better, only ask for
required information. If youre good at making a connection with the shopper
youll have other opportunities to learn about them after youve made the critical
first sale. Dont risk abandonment because shoppers cannot figure out which
fields are required or not without seeing an error.
For a pretty good example of a well-optimized checkout process, I refer you to the smart
folks at BackCountry.com (Figure 11). Theirs is a five step process that makes use of
most of the current best practices. Check out www.backcountry.com.
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Figure 12: Entry page view (entrances) and single access page view (bounces) reported in Google
Analytics. The bounce rate is the converse of stickiness so the stickiness of my home page (/ in
this example) is 100% minus 37% or 63% which is pretty good if I do say so myself!
The closer to one, the stickier the page is and the better off you are. Many people are
more comfortable treating this ratio as a percentage, thinking about the percent chance
the average visitor will see at least one more page.
Presentation
Depending on where you sit in the hierarchy you will want to keep track of a greater or
smaller number of pages using stickiness. More strategic resources dont necessarily
need this level of granularity while more tactical resources should be watching this KPI
closely. See order conversion rate per campaign for guidelines about who should see this
KPI but present your home page stickiness indicator to everyone. It is a good idea to
present this KPI in context with average page views per visit and percent high, medium
and low click depth visits and to quickly determine how much impact any problem page
is having on the rest of the web site.
Expectation
Ideally, if youre spending money to bring people to your web site, your offer is
compelling enough that a high percentage of visitors will do more than simply read your
landing page and leave. Some people might look at your offer and then come back later,
something much trickier to track but possible using most campaign analysis tools, but the
majority are either going to explore during that first visit or not at all.
Action
Especially with marketing campaigns, working to diagnose landing page issues is one of
the most high-value uses of web analytics. When you start a new campaign, make sure to
pay close attention to the stickiness of your main landing pages, watching for any poor
performers. Landing pages provide a classic use case for A/B testing programs, allowing
you to test many different landing pages against this KPI and the segment conversion rate
for visitors traversing each page.
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Figure 13: An alternative conversion event, in this case lead capture, tracked on a daily basis
demonstrating non-commerce conversion rates
These goal pages can be the answers to frequently asked questions, knowledgebase
articles or any kind of page that contains information that your site is designed to provide.
Some analytics systems make it difficult to identify a large number of conversion goals
something typically required of this ratebut sites providing cost-saving customer
support are encouraged to make an effort to identify them and track this indictor.
Also, it is important to keep in mind that unless you have a pure support site, your
visitors may not actually be looking for support and thusly will never see the information
youre monitoring. If possible, use your applications visitor segmentation tools to make
the calculation only for visitors who are looking at customer support content (or whatever
set of information youre trying to track.)
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Chapter 4
Key Performance
Indicators by
Business Type
Perhaps the most frequently asked questions about key performance indicators is, Which
KPIs should we use? to which the answer is usually, to quote Jim Sterne, It depends.
Hopefully, one of the reasons you bought this book instead of spending tens of thousands
of dollars with consultants is because youre committed to the idea of using KPIs. Ive
had the chance to work with a number of companies using KPIs to run their online
business and can provide some insight into the metrics most likely to help run your online
business. Now that Ive taken the time to tell you what the indicators are, its worth your
and my time to discuss how to use them in real business situations. In this chapter Ill
discuss which types of employees should see which key performance indicators for each
of the four major business models: retail, content and advertising, marketing, and
customer support sites.
Keep in mind that very few web sites have a single business modelmost sites are
predominantly one model and make some use of each of the other business models.
Consider the online retail site: the dominant business model is retail but these sites also
need to provide customer support, they almost always have some type of useful content
that theyd like visitors to read, and nearly always do some type of marketing. I do not
suggest that you simply take all of the key performance indicators I recommend for each
business model and distribute them throughout your organization. I do, however,
recommend that you read each of the following sections and try and determine which
KPIs might be relevant to individuals in your organization.
Along these lines, remember that in Chapter 1 Introduction I discussed the notion that
every person in the organization should not see the exact same key performance indicator
report. This is especially true in situations where site, marketing and merchandising
efforts are often specialized and managed by completely different groups. Trust me on
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Senior strategists: Senior executives should get three to five top-line KPIs that
speak directly to the sites core business objectives and profitability.
Mid-tier strategists: Mid-tier strategists are often the first people asked by senior
strategists when problems arise and thusly need to see the same KPIs as senior
strategists and those indicators that add an additional level of detail without
becoming mired in technical mumbo-jumbo.
Tactical resources: Tactical resources are those folks inside an organization that
arent fortunate enough to have a fancy title but still have a bunch of
responsibility. In most cases, these folks actually use and understand the web
analytics application. Tactical resources should get the same indicators that
senior executives and mid-tier strategists see, plus appropriate tactical KPIs to
keep an eye operational details.
Keep in mind, the following key performance indicators are merely recommendations for
organizations just getting started. If people in your organization have a well-refined
sense of the metrics they need to do their job, as long as they make sense and adhere to
my recommendations for definition, presentation, expectation setting and action driving,
by all means, toss these recommendations and use your own ideas!
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Usually visitor segmentation is used to make this measurement, essentially assigning the
visitor to the searcher segment if they search at any point in their visit and then making
the order conversion rate calculation for members of that segment. This KPI is important
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Figure 15: A top entry page report that shows the opposite of stickinesssomething that the
folks at Google Analytics call the bounce rate.
If your content changes frequently it is not uncommon for your page stickiness scores to
fluctuate about depending on how interesting your current content is to your visitors.
Still, if these scores are constantly low, meaning that your landing pages arent sticky,
some action will need to be taken.
Subscription Conversion Rate
If youre actively trying to engage your visitors by encouraging them to subscribe to an
email-based newsletter or to subscribe to your RSS feeds or podcasts, you should track
these events much the same as the information find conversion rate, trying to identify
what drives visitors to subscribe (Figure 16). Email subscriptions are pretty easy to track
since you almost always have a thank you for subscribing page. RSS feeds and
podcasts are more difficult to track; you may want to consider creating a redirect page
that can be counted when someone clicks on a link to your RSS feed. Ask your analytics
vendor for advice on this one.
Figure 16: Subscription links at CBSNews.com, each of which can be tracked as a conversion event
If youre really sophisticated, you might also want to create a visitor segment out of your
subscriber base and keep track of the percentage of subscribers actively coming to the
site.
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Figure 17: My Get FREE Stuff! offer that I use to generate leads throughout the Web Analytics
Demystified web site
The key metrics for marketing and lead generation sites are all about visitor engagement,
designed to help the organization keep a close eye on their lead generation and marketing
efforts relative to the cost of visitor acquisition. Marketing sites should examine these
metrics on a weekly basis, more frequently depending on how much money is currently
being spent to acquire visitors.
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Figure 18: Support site at Google Analytics, providing relevant links, a search engine, a glossary and
a summary of the top 25 support articles
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The most common problem sites have using this key performance indicator is working
too hard to determine whether a visitors question has truly been answered, especially
since close examination of many visitors clickstream shows that many such answers may
be viewed. The best advice I can offer is to use the information find conversion rate to
determine whether information can actually be found on a per-visit basis and compare
this to your customer satisfaction scores to understand whether the answer was helpful or
not. Obviously if yours is a customer support site but this indicator is low, something is
wrong.
Percent Visitors Using Search
Because most customer support sites are designed to be searched, paying attention to how
visitors use your search engine is critical. Nothing is more frustrating than having a
problem but not knowing where to find the solution, especially when calling for support
results in long hold-times, additional charges, etc. Mid-tier managers should keep a close
eye on the percentage of visitors searching for content on the site, looking for dramatic
changes that might indicate an increase in problems. Also, its a good idea to watch the
volume of inbound support phone calls as your search activity increases, looking for
correlation between failed search results and increased phone support costs.
Percent Visitors in a Specific Segment
Depending on the number of different products or product lines your company supports,
you may want to segment your visiting audience by the type of products they have to
watch for changes in the need for product support online. If your support site requires a
log-in and youre able to look-up the actual products the customer has purchased, great,
use that information for segmentation. Otherwise, consider assigning some type of
product category to each of your support documents and assign visitors to segments
based on which categories they browse. As with most segmentation strategies discussed
in this book, it is best to consult with your analytics provider regarding the specifics of
making this happen.
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Chapter 5
Parting Thoughts
Key performance indicators have the potential to change your businesses use of web
traffic data; all you have to do is really start to use them. Nearly all companies deploying
KPI-based reporting for their organizations have some great success story to tell about
how their connection to the data has improved, how much more quickly the organization
responds to problems on the web site or how theyve used KPIs to communicate the need
for changes to senior management. All you need to do is figure out which KPIs are right
for you, integrate them into your organization, and really get people to pay attention. Ive
spent the last ninety pages describing which KPIs are right for you, now I want to spend a
little time talking about driving integration and generating interest.
Hire a web data analyst. Bringing a web data analyst in to manage the analytics
application is the number one thing I recommend to companies trying to
institutionalize key performance indicators. Giving a single person or group
responsibility for determining which KPIs are right, how to build those indicators
using the available data, annotating that data and distributing it to relevant
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Make sure everyone knows who they can ask about the key performance
indicators. Make sure everyone knows who is responsible for generating the
reports and that they know who they can ask about the data. Especially if you
follow the hierarchical model I propose in the previous chapter, you want to
include information along with each KPI about who the internal owner of the
metric is and how they can be contacted directly (Figure 20).
Figure 20: Use of the internal owner column in the spreadsheets included with this book to make
sure that for each KPI the reader knows who they should contact if they have any questions or
concerns
Have regular meetings to discuss the data. The worst mistake any company
can make regarding the use of key performance indicators is to simply automate
their distribution and hope that people will understand the data and use it
properly. For most people, this type of data is new and unfamiliar; because of
this, youll need to take time to constantly revisit the indicators and their use until
they become institutional knowledge. I strongly recommend having a regular
meeting to review your key performance indicators and how current values
compare to your documented expectations.
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When discussing KPIs internally via email, use the BLUF method. When
problems arise, dont just send an email to everyone saying, Something is wrong,
look at your KPI report! Instead, use the Bottom Line Up Front approach,
opening the email with a one or two sentence summary of the issue that speaks
directly to the heart of the matter. Essentially a sound byte that encompasses a
handful of facts relevant to the issue, this statement should then be followed by a
paragraph that provides additional background and support for each of the
summary statements as well as reports or data that are relevant to the problem.
This strategy for email communication encapsulates well my recommendations
for hierarchical reporting, providing the right level of detail to each audience
member. (Thanks to Doug Sundahl for his description of how the BLUF method
works at Overstock.com.)
Unfortunately, figuring out which metrics go in which reports is only half the battle. At
the end of the day if you cannot get people to read and respond to your key performance
indicators then generating these reports is a waste of timeyoure just cluttering peoples
inboxes with more data theyre not going to use. Taking the time to try to deeply
integrate KPI reports into the organization sets you up to tackle the final challenge:
getting people to care about the data youre sending them.
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Be Inclusive
One mistake that some companies make when using key performance indicator reports is
not distributing them widely enough to take advantage of hidden talent in the
organization. If you get relevant reports out to a larger audience and are willing to listen
to feedback on the metrics regardless of where it comes from, you improve your chances
of having the KPIs drive the right action. Especially when it is clear what the
expectations for improvement in each indicator are, having more brains thinking about
the problem is almost always better (Figure 21).
Figure 21: One ways I recommend that you message targets and expectations using your key
performance indicator reports in such a way that everyone is clear about your business goals
Parting Thoughts
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What Next?
Once youve managed to integrate KPI reporting into the wider business and have
successfully encouraged people to pay close attention to how those indicators reflect the
health of the business, well, you deserve a big pat on the back. Assuming youve been
successful in your work, youre now better off than more than 90 percent of all
companies doing business online, at least in terms of how you report and use web-based
data. All that is left is to be diligent in your use of these indicators, constantly be on the
lookout for new indicators that may be as-or-more beneficial to the business that those
you currently use, and brilliantly run your online business.
To that point, and because this book was written to essentially be a living document, I
more than welcome any thoughts or experiences youd like to share regarding your use of
the indicators and approach I advocate. Feel free to write me anytime at
eric@webanalyticsdemystified.com. Who knows, if you have a really great example,
idea or insight, maybe youll be included in a future edition of The Big Book of Key
Performance Indicators.
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Index
A
A/B testing 34, 56, 65
Akamai 71
AOL 75
Average Revenue per Milli 80
B
BackCountry.com 63
BLUF method 95
Bob Page 16
Bryan Eisenberg 6
Sam Decker 96
V
visitor segments 19, 21
C
CBSNews.com 82
Clickz Network 5, 6
CNN 44
CPM 20, 27
D
Dell Computers 96
Doug Sundahl 95
Drilling Down 6, 78
M
Mercado 34, 49
MSN 37
W
Web Analytics Association 6
Web Analytics Demystified 2, 4,
5, 6, 38, 44, 62
Web Analytics Forum at Yahoo!
Groups 2, 5, 6
Web Site Measurement Hacks
2, 4, 5, 70
WebSideStory 5
WebSideStory Search 49
O
Y
onClick event 51
OpinionLab 48, 75
Overstock.com 95
E-metrics Summit 6
E-metrics: Business Metrics for
the New Economy 6
Endeca 34, 49, 77
ESPN 57
RSS feeds 82
ZAAZ 5, 79, 84